Monday, June 29, 2015

KDOT Aviation Director reports on her experience at the Air Race Classic

KDOT Aviation Director Tiffany Brown (right) and her teammate Taylor Humphrey pose in the plane they used in the Air Race Classic.

I think it’s rare to go into an experience knowing that two
weeks of your life will be a once in a lifetime experience. The personal and
financial sacrifices it took to make the race happen for Taylor and I will be
hard to replicate but we both agreed we left the finish line with no regrets.

An aerial view of the Mississippi River.

The race started on Monday, June 22 when groups of 5
airplanes would be signaled to start their engines together and taxi to the
starting line one behind the other. There were over 50 teams so the time
between each engine start was long enough that I was able to watch about the
first 20 before getting in my airplane. Hearing so many engines roar all at
once gave me goosebumps. One by one we would make our radio calls onto the
runway. Aviation radio calls have a simple structure: where you are, who you
are, what you are doing, where you are. The race started at Stafford Regional
Airport in Fredericksburg, Virginia and when our turn came we made our first
race call. “Stafford, Classic Racer 45, line up and wait Runway 15, Stafford.”
We proceeded onto the runway and waited for the flag drop. As it dropped we
went full throttle and made our departure call, “Stafford, Classic Racer 45, on
the roll Runway 15, Stafford.” The Cessna we flew has traffic awareness in the
cockpit that visually and audibly warns the pilot of nearby traffic to assist
in preventing mid-air collisions. As we departed our screen lit up with
targets, “Traffic, 3 o’clock, high” then “Traffic, 1 o’clock, low” our heads
were on swivels as we were approached and passed or were passed by other
racers. The first leg was the busiest and the traffic naturally spread out
after our first stop and fly-by.

Each race leg is timed individually and to stop the clock a
racer would do a “fly-by” at 200 feet above the ground at a selected airport.
These fly-bys would make or break your race score. If you did anything wrong a
racer would be penalized anywhere from 4 to 10 knots. Penalties came from
missing one of your required radio calls, to forgetting to turn on your landing
lights, or flying the fly-by to high or low or in the wrong corridor. Our team
encountered one penalty during the race for missing a radio call on the first
of the nine stops and we flew the rest of the fly-bys perfectly.

My co-pilot, Taylor, and I would switch off legs. At each
leg we would do a fly-by and then circle to land, refuel, check the weather,
eat something, and then takeoff again.The pilot in left seat was responsible for flying the airplane or managing
the autopilot and the pilot in right seat was responsible for everything else.
Weather is such an integral part of flying and was the basis of all of our
decisions to continue on or to stay at a stop and wait. In-between
Lawrenceville, Ill., and Kirksville, Mo., we took a chance on the weather. A
storm was approaching Kirksville that we would not want to fly into but the leg
from Kirksville to Union City, Tenn., had killer tailwinds we wanted to fly in.
A tailwind is when the wind is moving in the same direction as the airplane and
a headwind is when the wind is moving in the opposite direction of the
airplane. The difference between a headwind and a tailwind dramatically
increases or decreases the ground speed of the airplane and plays a huge part
in our score. Think of it as trying to swim upstream versus trying to swim
downstream. We were one of two airplanes that took the chance on beating the
storm and made our plan B to land off route if the storm beats us. Plan B would
have completely taken us out of the race but no guts, no glory so we pressed
on. The turnaround in Kirksville was the fastest turnaround of all our stops.
It was luck that Kirksville prides themselves on their speed of refueling
planes. There was no delay and while the other planes were on the ground
waiting for the storm to pass we were making our departure fly-by to make it to
the next leg. Taking that chance paid off and that leg was our highest scoring
leg in the race.

The rest of the race was relatively uneventful. The leg to
the finish line in Fairhope, Alabama was riddled with isolated thunderstorms.
The thunderstorms popped up on both sides of us as we were about 20 miles out
of Fairhope and closed up behind us. As they closed up they caused about 6
racers to have to divert and fly into the airport from the south instead of the
most direct route from the north. We concluded that we had gotten lucky and
were relieved to be done. In three days we spent 20 hours in a cockpit side by
side. Taylor was the youngest racer to fly the race this year and she did a
phenomenal job. Taylor has an uncanny ability to stay calm under stress, which
is a great trait to have in someone sitting next to you.

Our team ended up placing 42nd in a field of 55
registered racers. We ended up with a technical penalty for unreported
maintenance to the airplane that resulted in a 5-knot penalty on every leg.
While the technical penalty killed our score we were both extremely pleased
with how we flew the race and both think we did the best we could have done.

We both came home with 40 hours of flight time in conditions
and terrain completely unfamiliar to us and landed as better pilots than when
we took off. At the end of the race we kept getting asked what’s next. So what
is next? Taylor will finish her summer working on her instrument rating so she
can fly in the instrument conditions I described in my first
blog (June 23). She will start college in the fall at Southwestern
University in Winfield with plans to join the Air Force after college. I will
continue working on my flight instructor rating so I can start to pass down all
of the knowledge I’ve worked so hard to gain. It’s humbling to think for two
weeks we spent time in the ranks of the modern-day Amelia Earharts. These are
woman with the same adventurous spirit she had when she and a group of woman
started the air race in 1929. It was a life changing experience filled with
contacts and friendships we will keep for a lifetime.